FreeSpeech for 06-23-10

Tue, 06/22/2010 - 11:23amThe Citizen

[What do you really think? Email us your pithy opinions, your short takes on life in Fayette and environs, your gotta-get-it-off-your-chest questions or sound-offs. Emails only to editor@TheCitizen.com. Put Free Speech in your subject line and include your contribution as the body text of your email. No signature required. No phone calls, faxes or snail-mail letters, please. No personal attacks on private persons, but just about any aspect of public life is fair game.]

To the lady in PTC with a cocker spaniel on a leash: Why don’t you let this animal poop in your own yard? You don’t even take a plastic bag with you. (Most dog walkers do not carry plastic bags with them, but they do make sure the dog makes it to the cart path system, prior to his release, that ends up draining into Lake Peachtree.) Then the dog, and you and I, drink that treated water, that comes to us via a water pipe, beneath the ground, where you stood, waiting for your dog to relieve himself. And once a week, prior to cutting the grass, I am in my yard, with a shovel in hand, scooping up a feces that started in your kitchen, in the form of table scraps, or pet food, plus a bowl of water, that came from a water pipe, beneath your clean yard.

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Fayette County Sheriff’s car #277, you need to get your turn signals fixed. You were weaving in and out of traffic this morning on Ga. Highway 314 and not once did you signal. I guess they are broke.

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To particular residents of Building A of Gable’s Courts Apartments (Steven’s Entry) and Building 13 of The Retreat Apartments (Senoia Road) who recently ordered Chinese food delivery, please spend some time to learn about tipping your driver before you order food again. There’s no reason to shaft a struggling college student; a common courtesy: if you cannot afford the tip, then pick the food up yourself.

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We keep hearing that the U.S. education system sucks and many states and other countries are doing a much better job of educating their population than we are. Here are some questions that need to be answered by the Georgia state superintendent of schools so that the average taxpayer can better evaluate our system: (1) How much are leading states and countries spending per student compared to us. (2) What are their average student/teacher and student/administrator ratios compared to us? (3) How many hours do they spend in core courses (reading, writing, arithmetic, history, and science) per week compared to us? (4) How many hours do they spend in school per year compared to us? (5) How many hours do they spend in physical training/sports and arts/music education each week? (6) What are their discipline standards? (7) And, why aren’t we doing what they are doing?

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To the parents of the kids that sprayed graffiti all over the stop signs and AT&T box in my neighborhood on June 15: I know your kids and where they live. This time I cleaned the graffiti off the signs. If this happens again, I’ll report them to the police. This time’s on me; next time’s on you.

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What in the world is PTC thinking? We need a Walgreens like we need a hole in the head. What a complete waste of money. Furthermore, we keep on building more retail spaces and cannot occupy the ones that are already in place. It should be a law that all open retail spaces must be occupied before we can build any more. PTC is becoming to look like a long lost western town with empty buildings. Along with the neglected cart paths, overgrown weeds, vacant houses, and empty retail spaces the city, like it or not, is in a sorry and declining state. Wake up, Mr. Mayor and council, before it’s too late.

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Wow! And yet another drugstore. Just what this town needs. Why not put it in one of the many vacant buildings in town. They are plentiful. And while we are at it, let’s build more apartments and condos. We can’t occupy the ones that are already built. I thought I had made a pretty good selection on the last election. Man, did I ever screw up. Promises made, promises broken. Sad, sad, sad.

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In response to Steve Brown’s letter to the editor, I don’t care what Steve Brown thinks of Jack Smith personally, he has no right to imply that the Bank of Georgia is a “failure.” The cease and desist order he linked to is a year old, if anyone cared to scroll to the end of the document to find out. They’re still open, in case Mr. Brown hadn’t noticed. The AJC article Mr. Brown quoted is also a year old, and was shortly followed by another article that he seems to have forgotten: “One small bank’s course to safer seas,” by Paul Donsky, which outlined the changes the bank had already made. The Bank of Georgia is not “Jack Smith’s bank,” as Mr. Brown asserts, and he should be ashamed of himself for falsely dragging a business’s reputation through the mud for his own political gain. This community needs to support its small businesses, including the community banks that have invested in our future.

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As somebody said in this column, Peachtree City is lucky to have a code enforcement office. Unfortunately, we almost never see one of its employees enforcing the ordinances. They don’t do it on their own; most of the time we have to call if we see any irregularity. I believe there are at least three employees

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Is it just me, or does PTC appear to be overgrown with weeds? There are many areas in town where the grass and weeds has grown several feet. I’m not sure if “I love to call it home anymore.” Let’s bring back our Public Works people and get this city back to looking like it should.